Empower Your School: Whole-School Biodiversity Train-the-Trainer CPD

Our students need a connection to nature now more than ever. Spend one day with us and go home able to lead Biodiversity CPD with your own colleagues, with everything prepared, timed and ready to run.

YOU WILL LEAVE WITH
● Three ready-made 30-minute sessions — What is biodiversity and why does it matter? · What’s happening to biodiversity, globally and in Ireland? · Imagining something different which can be run as one 90-minute staff session or as 3 × 30 minutes across the year.
● The full facilitator manual, to scaffold your sessions.
● Editable slide decks with presenter notes, including short videos from Irish teachers that you can use in the sessions.
● Ready-to-run activities and print-outs — the pollinator matching game, drivers of loss, research cards, the school-grounds mapping exercise.
● Practice facilitating on the day, including dealing with the awkward responses: “we’ve no time for this”, “it’s not my subject”.
● The start of your own school’s Dúlra plan, mapped to your own site, with the actions you’ll take first — and a network of schools doing the same.

We encourage a member of the senior leadership team to attend alongside a member of staff. Whole-staff CPD only happens when someone can protect the time for it — and when leadership is in the room, the message to staff is that this is the school’s work, not one teacher’s hobby or reponsibility.

Our full-day CPD workshop empowers educators to lead transformative, whole-school biodiversity training within their own school communities. Utilising a proven peer-led facilitation model, the interactive session provides teachers with the complete resource pack, core knowledge, and practical confidence required to return to their schools and facilitate impactful training for their staff.

Throughout the day, participants will explore the critical importance of biodiversity, examining the key issues facing ecosystems both globally and across Ireland. Explore global and Irish biodiversity contexts, the link between nature connection and student wellbeing, and practical school-ground actions.

The workshop highlights the vital link between nature connection and student wellbeing, while walking teachers through tangible, action-oriented strategies to enrich biodiversity directly on their school grounds. Walk away with the resources and confidence to deliver biodiversity CPD sessions with your colleagues. 

Places are limited. The session is capped at twenty-five participants to ensure a collaborative, hands-on experience for educators ready to drive environmental leadership.

Please note, substitution is not available for teachers attending this day.

Faciltator: Codie Preston - ISSN

Codie Preston has been a post primary teacher of Science and Biology for almost 20 years and is currently the Programme Manager for the Irish Schools Sustainability Network. He has experience running Biodiversity initiatives including the ISSN Biodiversity Champions Programme and the successful Rockbrook Biodiversity Festival as well as various school based actions for nature and outdoor learning.